


this honeyed sting

by tentaclemonster



Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Drug Use, F/F, Femslash February, POV Second Person, Sexual Incompatibility, Somnophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:08:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22645405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tentaclemonster/pseuds/tentaclemonster
Summary: You can do whatever you want to someone who's lost in the sticky haze of Prisoner's Honey. Learning how to actually go through with it, though? That's something entirely different.
Relationships: Female Constable/Bohemian Actress (Fallen London), Original Female Character/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 44
Collections: Femslash February





	this honeyed sting

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt '19th century' which Fallen London technically?? is.

You can do whatever you want to someone who's lost in the sticky haze of Prisoner's Honey.

That's the first thing you learn about dating a Bohemian.

Learning how to actually go through with it, though? That's something entirely different.

Your girlfriend doesn't see the problem.

"I don't see the problem," she says the morning after what should have been the first night you slept together.

She sips her tea at the kitchen table wearing nothing but a shirt that barely covers her thighs. It's a man's shirt, not a woman's, and you try not to wonder if she procured it on her own because she liked it or if it once belonged to a man who left it here in her lodgings.

Those wonderings only pave the way to jealousy and from there lies the route to madness, you well know.

You can't begrudge her for having former lovers anyway. Not when you knew what the life of a Bohemian actress was like before you became personally involved with this one and not the least bit because you're not yet even really her current lover yourself.

"You don't see the problem?" you ask her, ridiculously annoyed at how unbothered she looks, how calmly she sips her tea and watches you over the rim of the cup like you're little more than a child throwing a fit it'll tire from in time. "You were almost completely unresponsive. It was like you weren't even there."

"And?"

"And I don't rightly feel comfortable fucking someone who's comatose, that's what."

You're not exaggerating, either. If anything, you're downplaying the extent of how you felt.

You think of the way she had been laying in the bed last night, nude and sweating from the honey. She would've looked asleep had it not been for her eyes which were wide open and blinking or the way she spoke in such a low whisper you could only make out her words enough to surmise she wasn't talking to you. That she was, apparently, having a conversation with someone who wasn't even there.

You felt like a monster when you touched her, your fingers slipping into her cunt only for her to barely move in response to it. Her insides were wet like she was aroused, but otherwise she seemed uninterested. Unknowing and unaware. You'd tried kissing her, but she didn't kiss back. You couldn't even get wet yourself at the thought of being able to do whatever you wanted to her or to the sight of her lush body spread out before you, all yours for the taking.

You'd only felt sick to your stomach for doing what little you had and no amount of reminding yourself that she had told you she was okay with you having her like that made you feel any less like you'd violated her.

When you told her this morning that nothing had happened last night and why, she'd reacted in such an unconcerned way that you felt as though you had been slapped.

Now she finishes her tea quietly and then puts her cup down softly on the table. It doesn't so much as make a sound.

"I told you the only way I like having sex is when I've taken a few drops," she says, so calmly, so patiently that you wonder if the honey is still affecting her even now or if she'd added a drop to her tea when you weren't looking. "It's how I've always done it. I told you I'm okay with it, so why shouldn't you be?"

"Because it just..." You huff, frustrated. "It doesn't feel right. I'm a constable, for God's sake, I put people who take advantage of unconscious women in prison."

"You weren't taking advantage of me," she says and you still hear nothing in her voice. No indignation, not even a mild annoyance at the conversation.

A part of you wishes you were arguing, that she was screaming and throwing things and telling you to get over yourself. You wish you could hear the slightest bit of passion in her voice over anything, but she looks now as she did last night. Awake, but not present. A person there, but not in any way moved by the proceedings.

You wish you could yell at her, too, but you can't muster up any anger at someone who is so completely nonchalant. It would feel like yelling at a brick wall and likely do as much good.

You try to remember what she was like when you first met her months ago -- a smiling, bright, beautiful girl who had run into some trouble with a pickpocketing orphan. You'd stopped him and returned her purse to her and she'd laughed with thanks, grin wide and dimpling.

You hadn't known she used honey then. You still don't know if she did in the beginning or if she had only started after you began seeing each other regularly. Once you found out, though, it had been too late. You'd already felt yourself falling for her which is why it hurts so much now to see her behaving so differently from how she once was.

"Can't you just try?" you ask her, nearly pleading. "Without the honey, I mean. Surely you would be happier if--"

"No," she interrupts you and you see the first flash of emotion in her eyes all morning, but it's gone in an instant. "I don't want to. You can't ask that of me."

You can feel something in you breaking. A string pulled taut snapping in half.

"I don't want to do what happened last night again, either," you tell her.

She looks at you blankly and you feel one last shred of hope in you that she'll change her mind before she nods and kills it.

"That's it, then," she says and your heart aches at the utter apathy in her voice as she says it.

"Yes," you say, swallowing back something painful and sharp. "I guess that's it."


End file.
